MiddleAged
by CradleToGrave
Summary: A fic documenting the vast differences between the thirtieth birthdays of two of our favorite people...DN until death. As fluffy as the really old bread in the cupboard.
1. Chapter 1

Middle-Aged

Summary: A fic documenting the vast differences between the thirtieth birthdays of two of our favorite people...DN until death. As fluffy as the really old bread in the cupboard.

Disclaimer/Dumps coffee in lap/ We all do dumb things. Claiming to own the Immortals doesn't have to be one of them.

Notes: Fluff doesn't come until next chappy. Capesche?

Part I

Daine sat and pointedly shut her eyes tightly, groping around within her for something to be happy about. For not the first nor the last times during these troubled times, she failed past the basics of she wasn't dead yet and still had the strength the fight off the monster--gaining momentum every day as the mass graves grew bigger--as of yet.

Her thoughts, blatantly ignoring her wishes, skipped around to the no less than hectic few days when those with such gifts as she, Numair, Tkaa, and Kitten had were absolutely drained of any movement beyond those of the absolutely necessary kinds and possessed a great weariness of the bones, the flesh, the mind and the heart.

Veralidaine Sarrasri, through no small feat of willpower, smiled.

Not an all-out grin, that would have alerted even the dumbest stranger fifty-feet away of the falsehood of it, but just the slightest upward movement. For an unsure moment in flickered, but the girl grit her teeth and it stayed.

Alas, even Kitten looked dubious, an expression incredibly difficult to manage for the lovely reptilian being. She trilled doubtfully and even her notes were half-hearted, but Daine glared with all the ferocity she could muster.

Kitten looked vaguely put-off.

"Magelet?" Numair had opened one weary eye and looked at her; almost instantly reminding himself not to gaze for too long lest someone suspect.

"Yes, Numair?" The simple phrase was nearly comical, the first syllable being dreary and forced and the last two as light as she could make them.

"You're not fooling anyone."

Daine grew irritated and when she opened her mouth was stunned to find the words _nuh-uh_ on the tip of her tongue.

"Fine." She replied sulkily and slumped back in her chair only to find herself incapable of sleep, despite the fact she had a luxurious fifteen minutes before Jonathon would be able to come and send them off elsewhere.

She wondered absently how long they'd been doing this, she had assured herself time and time again that _surely_ they could keep this up for a few months. Daine began adding up the dates mildly...

And then sat up abruptly, comprehension dawning on her nearly-gray face.

"Oh, Numair."

She had sounded so crestfallen the mage had come out of his half-sleep muddled state worried, wanting to know what was wrong, and how to fix it. "What's wrong?"

"I'm so sorry."

_That_ was alarming in itself, so he dredged up some of the last reserves of his patience. "For what?"

"It's your _birthday_..." She said unhappily, "And today's been so awful."

She was right. From the start, the unfortunately early start, of the day things had been hellish. The endless hours had gone by in a whirlwind of bloodshed, silver claws, screams, grunts, and at last, of the final stages of exhaustion.

"It's all right." He spoke mildly, for until the guilt of forgetting her good friend's birthday passed, she would not rest. He then smiled, just for a second. "I was hoping that no one would remember."

"Goddess, you're thirty."

Numair didn't even try to smile at that. That had basically been the part he was hoping no one would remember, and he told her as much.

Daine had the decency to giggle at that and for a moment looked like the sixteen-year-old girl she was. He stared at her a little too intently for a little too long, but the moment passed and everyone present was too tired to notice.

For the first time in months her eyes lit up, she practically skipped over to his chair, sat on one of the armrests and grinned at him. Not a fake smile, so that passerby and acquaintances don't have a melancholy girl on top of everything else to deal with, a grin that glowed with happiness.

"We're going to do something fun." She said it in a way that most people said _That teacher of yours is a bit odd _and _Thayet is rather pretty_. As an undeniable and consequently unavoidable fact.

For the first time in over two years, Numair was completely floored. "Really?"

She nodded and gave him a sidelong, perhaps flirtatious (though that may have been wishful thinking), and touched his shoulder. "If it kills me."

He knew, beyond a doubt, she meant it.

The afternoon came along slow enough, but sped away just as soon as anyone started to enjoy it. The call had been easy enough to take care of, if you considered things relatively as one should and has to do every now and then. It had only taken an hour or two for Numair to figure out the subtleties of the invisibility spell, and break it. Once they were able to be seen, the flying monkeys (the thought of which had been considered humorous once) were dispatched promptly.

Thoughts swirled wildly around in his head, he was thirty. He was _old_, in the opinion of some, no longer 'young' in the opinion of others. While it was tough on his vanity, it was far harder for the part his mind he tried to sever to cope with. He was officially middle-aged, and in love with a sixteen-year-old.

That ranked somewhere between mildly alarming and full-out disturbing as far as he was concerned, neither of which boded well for romance.

He sat, unobserved and neutral, on a large patch of sunny grass. Numair listened mildly as Daine tried to chatter (to avoid awkward silences) and wasn't having much luck at it.

At long last she gave him a crooked look as he nodded aimlessly. "It's all right."

"Hm?" He desperately tried to remember what the hell they (the word 'they' being used in the loosest since of the term) had been talking about an failed.

"Really. I don't mind."

"What?"

"You don't have to pretend to be happy." She bit into something that bore a dreadful resemblance to our hardtack and frowned plaintively as she tried to chew it.

"I'm not-"

"-Numair. Just get some rest, okay?"

"Fair enough."

There were certainly worse ways to spend the day than in the miserable company of a miserable friend.


	2. Chapter 2

The violent inhale of breath actually woke her up seconds before the sobbing did. With a grunt she rolled off the bed (Over her bedmate, whose turn it was to wake up. Pure coincidence, of course.)

"Lungs on that thing," she muttered with the kind of darkness that only comes out in the wee hours of the morning.

"I'm sure you're not referring to our daughter that way," answered the lump on the bed, and even all these years later she had to struggle to ignore the butterflies in her stomach.

Still, the grin she couldn't help as she looked down on him. He smiled back, the edges of his eyes wrinkling as he did. Mysteriously, Serra grew silent.

"Since you're up…" He allowed an exaggerated pause at the end of the sentence and she giggled and punched his shoulder. "Would you like breakfast?" He finished.

She nodded happily and offered him her hands. He seized the one that bore his wedding ring even at this hour and used it to haul himself out of the bed. Holding hands as though they were both teenagers, the made their way down to the kitchen, slowly. There was no hurry. After all, they had today, and then, the rest of their lives.

He slowly loaded logs into the fireplace and with a casual flick of his hand watched as they promptly went up in flames. With the same steady, deliberate movements that had suited him quite nicely for decades now Numair filled the kettle with clear water and placed it on a hook above the fireplace. He pulled up a chair and they sat, together and watched the fire burn.

Slowly the trickle of steam rising from the kettle became a torrent and he moved about the kitchen with grace that she still admired. They began to eat a porridge with nuts, milk, and sugar in it and a cup of hot tea. She made sure to eat slowly, savoring the taste of every bite as well as the warmth she could now feel in her stomach that slowly traveled throughout her entire body. Between the warmth within and around her and the gorgeous sunrise the mutely watched through the window, a satisfied "hm" was the only noise that escaped her lips.

They finished eating their meals in a peaceful and companionable silence as they had never been ones to waste air among those they respected. Daine made a move to help with the dishes, but he swatted her hands away from her dishes with one of his (though it pained his wife to admit it) grins that retained every iota of its charm.

She waited a while he set the dishes aside and walked back over to her, bending down, his lips far closer to her ears than would have been needed simply to be heard. "Happy birthday, magelet."

As he leaned back slightly she very deliberately turned her head to catch his lips with hers and felt his quiet smile turn into a Cheshire grin before his hands moved to lightly grasp her waist.

She stood up, easing her body to be completely pressed against his as the kiss grew deeper. He felt her hands wrapped around his waist in a tight grip.

Numair's hands moved under her shirt to feel the skin on her back, his fingers dancing lightly over the still-present scars.


End file.
